Robot 6

Comics A.M. | Michael George denied retrial; DC to close forums

Legal | A judge denied a motion for acquittal and a new trial in the case of Michael George, the former comic book store owner and convention organizer convicted of killing his wife in 1990, dismissing the defense’s argument that there was insufficient evidence for conviction. George is serving a life sentence. [Detroit Free Press]

Publishing | DC Comics announced last night it will shut down its message board in early March as part of an overhaul of the publisher’s website that will include Facebook-hosted commenting and integrated Twitter feeds. [The Source]

Creators | About 15 people threw eggs at Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks as he spoke on freedom of speech at the University of Karlstad. Vilks has raised the ire of some Muslims with his cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammed. Vilks told the audience, “Insults are part of democratic society. If we begin censoring ourselves, it will mean undermining freedom of speech in the long run. I don’t think that the problem is that artists are too provocative but that we are not provocative enough.” None of the eggs hit the cartoonist, and the protestors were removed from the room. [UPI.com]

F-OO Fighters

Comics | USA Today will run weekly installments of F-OO Fighters, a World War II/sci-fi mashup in which the Allies and the Axis powers have to contend with alien invaders. Yes, the name is pronounced the same as the band (the expression has its roots in World War II slang), and there’s even music (by another artist) to go with it. [USA Today]

Creators | With a new collected edition of The Shadow: Blood & Judgment on the way in April from Dynamite Entertainment, creator Howard Chaykin talks about why he took on the comic and what he thinks of the character. “I was always a Batman fan rather than a Superman guy. I was always for the guy who put himself through the work and effort to achieve, rather than just have it handed to him. So I like non-super-powered costumed characters more than I like super-powered costumed characters. So I tended to emphasize the aspects of The Shadow that were those of a mortal man who had trained himself to be a superhero.” [ICv2]

Creators | Colleen Coover talks about life in Portland, Oregon, the origins of Gingerbread Girl, and her upcoming projects, as well as the joys of working on both superhero comics and creator-owned works. [Multiversity Comics]

The Silence of Our Friends

Creators | Erin Williams talks to Mark Long, Jim Demonakos and Nate Powell about The Silence of Our Friends, their graphic novel about black and white families in Houston in the 1960s. Demonakos: “We really wanted to feel like you were experiencing a story from a very specific perspective, because we didn’t have a narrator. We very specifically didn’t create caption boxes. We wanted you as the reader to experience it at whatever pace you’d start reading it.” [The Root DC Live]

Creators | Joe Sacco talks about his work in a video shot at the Angoulême International Comics Festival. As in the others in this series, the questions are in French and the answers are in English. [The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log]

Creators | Womanthology contributors Ming Doyle, Chrissie Zullo, and Janet Lee came to Greensboro, North Carolina, lately to autograph their work and participate in a panel discussion about working in a male-dominated industry. “Comics are so overwhelmingly white and male,” Doyle said. “Isn’t it great to have a broader spectrum of voices contributing to this medium? Women can also get [presentation] wrong but I think women overall are more apt to see the nuances.” [Yes Weekly]

Digital | Robot 6 contributor Brigid Alverson talks to Robert Newman of the online manga site JManga about the possibility that the site, which is currently available only in North America, could go global. [MangaBlog]

catsmeow

Oh well, I’ve been banned from the DC forums for quite some time, so this doesn’t bother me. But I don’t like that DC will be using Facebook and Twitter on their website for feedback! I will have to create a dummy Facebook and Twitter profile so I don’t have to use my real name.

willy

bluedevil2002

The DC forums have been horrible for about 10 years now. I remember going there a lot near the end of No Man’s Land and a few years after, but then DC kept changing things and it seems like all of the intelligent posters left.

And I think they got to the point where you couldn’t even read them without being logged in. I tried to read a page here or there as part of a Google search, but no luck.

Good riddance.

The Relic

“Yes, the name is pronounced the same as the band (the expression has its roots in World War II slang),”

Actually, while the term “foo” was popular WWII jargon, the term was popularized in Bill Holman’s classic early 1930s comic strip “Smokey Stover”, about a wacky firefighter. It was even used in the 1937 cartoon “Porky in Wackyland”.

Logic

eric

The DC boards were my first real experiences with Internetting back in 1999. I met a bunch of great people through those boards, some of whom I still keep in contact with, including my first real, long-term girlfriend. Though I haven’t been there since about 2001, I have fond memories of the place and I feel a little sad that it’s going away.

catsmeow

catsmeow: Since your post was about trolling DC’s Facebook-hosted messaging system, with regards to Willy, I think you may be the pot calling the kettle black.

It’s one thing to constructively criticize DC and rationally explain why you may not like their product. But it’s pretty lame when someone posts douchey remarks just for the sake of being a jackass. DC is probably not going to make any major changes because someone rationally lodged a complaint on their message board. So they’re even less likely to do so if people log on to post all kinds of inane, ungrammatical jibberjabber. Hopefully DC will have some consistent, well-though-out terms of use for posters on the new system to nip any shananigans in the bud.

catsmeow

Christopher Burton, I never trolled the DC boards. I was banned because my opinions were too controversial. I was actually the victim of their fascism. Oh well, I am glad I will be able to use Facebook and Twitter (albeit not my actual profiles with my real name) to express myself on the new DC site.

Samir P

Not sorry to see the end of the DC boards and there are other places where you can post your views.

@catsmeow, how is DC behaving in a fascist manner? It’s their board and their terms of service (i.e., privately owned). From what I understand, they have every right to allow or prevent people from posting on those forums.

JRC

I was on DC boards for a little less then a year and happily left.
It was definitely the worst forum I’d ever spent time on, driven away by the ill informed, the trolls, and outright ludicrous levels of hatred over everything and anything.

As for catsmeow, while I agree there is sometimes a need for anonymity when protesting or criticizing, I remember you from the DC boards, and more often then not you came across as a hate-baiting egomaniac.
Really, if you aren’t proud enough to say your piece w/ your real name, then maybe you don’t need to say it so much as you want to hear yourself rage and provoke a pointless digression of one-upmanship.
Start a blog and leave the level headed to their social discourse.

catsmeow

Heather

The people saying F-OO Fighters is a Harry Turtledove rip-off do realize that its basis is real-life WWII fighter pilots’ claims of UFO sightings in battle (information easy enough to acquire if one bothers to read the article about it), right? Or did these pilots somehow also “rip off” a man who had yet to be born at the time of their supposed experiences?